I remember hearing something about a new time travel-themed show called Travelers that sounded interesting. Unfortunately it slipped my mind to keep an eye out for the premiere, but then I got a message from one of my regular readers mentioning that they’d fallen in love with the show and recommending I try it. Showcase’s website had the first two episodes available to watch, so I gave it a go.

Pilot episode:

In the world of Travelers, some unnamed disaster in the far-flung future has wiped out most of humanity. In order to prevent this grisly fate, the technology has been developed to send people’s consciousnesses back in time, where they possess the body of someone moments before their death.

The first episode introduces us to one particular team of travelers (apparently there’s an entire army of them) as they enter their hosts and adjust to life in the twenty-first century.

It’s not a strong start.

Travelers’ pilot is very slow and tells us precious little about what is actually going on. I have a certain feeling of being strung along in the hopes of answers, which is something I truly hate in fiction.

It’s already clear that a lot of the series is going to be devoted to showing the travelers’ struggles to maintain their covers and cope with their new lives — the pilot is devoted almost entirely too this — but that’s not an angle that much appeals to me. I’d rather focus on the sci-fi.

I will grant that a few of the concepts are a bit interesting. One traveler, Philip, landed in the body of a heroine addict and is now struggling to cope with his withdrawals, and another, Marcy, wound up possessing a mentally challenged woman and now has to explain why she can suddenly read and use complete sentences.

The other characters are far less interesting, though.

There are other problems too, such as numerous plot holes. Supposedly most of their intelligence on the past comes from mining the Internet for data, yet apparently they don’t understand Internet slang?

There’s a lot of stuff like that. One moment, the travelers’ knowledge of the past is encyclopedic, the next they’re running into all kinds of problems due to their incomplete intelligence. Marcy being one of the more prominent examples.

Furthermore, it’s clearly established that their goal is to change the past, on a large scale, and yet sometimes they seem determined not to change history. At one point there’s a scene where one traveler has the chance to save someone from death, but he doesn’t because that death was “supposed” to happen according to history. It would be a powerful scene, but the whole point of the travelers’ mission is to change history and save lives, so it just doesn’t make any sense.

The one thing I can say in Travelers’ favour right now is the cast seems really strong. Every actor seems unusually comfortable in their roles for a pilot, and they’re all putting on strong performances.

Also, it is good to see yet more Canadian sci-fi. Already spotting some familiar faces, like Ian Tracey (Sanctuary’s Dr. Jekyll and Continuum’s Jason Sadler) and Leah Cairns (BSG’s Racetrack).

Overall rating: 5.9/10

“Protocol 6”:

Travelers’ second episode is a bit less uneventful, though still not terribly impressive.

With the team assembled, the travelers embark on their first mission: preventing a massive explosion that originally claimed thousands of lives. The sudden shift from fishes out of water to expert team saving the world is a bit jarring, but at least it’s a little more interesting.

There’s not quite as much time wasted on each character’s alter ego, and the pacing isn’t quite so slow, but there’s still a fair bit of problems. There’s still that inexplicable disconnect between their trying to alter the past while also trying not to alter the past. There’s still no clue what happened to make the future so bad, and no hint of any over-arching storyline. It will be a tremendous waste of potential if this turns out to be a “case of the week” show.

I don’t understand why the different traveler teams aren’t allowed to help each other, either, but add it to the list, I guess.

The only thing about this show I’m particularly enjoying so far is Marcy. The dynamic with her social worker is pretty interesting.

Overall rating: 6.1/10 I’m not sure if I’m going to keep watching this show right now. There’s some potential, but it certainly hasn’t impressed me so far.

All apologies to the fellow he recommended it to me. I’m sure this isn’t the glowing review you were hoping for.

When last I discussed this year’s Halloween event in The Secret World, I pointed out that we had yet to see the whole event and that my opinion of it might change once we had.

We now have explored the mystery of the Rider in its entirety, and I do find my view of the event has shifted. Largely for the better.

I’m not going to explain every stage of the event in its entirety, because I have other things to do today. If you want to understand the event and all it’s entailed, I direct you to the official forums.

The meat of it involves world bosses. Every half hour, the Rider will appear in a certain zone, spawning event-specific mobs throughout the zone. Slaying all these mobs before the Rider moves on to the next zone will summon a manifestation.

However, as we discovered halfway through the event, if a number of players use the /worship emote at specific points around the zone while one player utilizes various event drops at the Rider just as the last mobs are killed, you can enact a ritual to summon an empowered version of the manifestation, which drops improved loot.

The empowered bosses also dropped clues that led to the next few stages of the event, ultimately culminating in the Rider making an appearance in Agartha, where he will stay until the end of the event on 8th. If you /bow to him, you get his mask.

It’s not a perfect event, and there are legitimate criticisms to be made. What’s bothering me the most right now is how low the drop rates for the new cosmetics are. Given how much work empowered manifestations are to summon and kill, you’d think the drop rates would be a bit more generous. I’ve yet to see a single drop of any of the new fiery eyes items, and the prices for them at auction are usually extortionate.

Still, the event has grown on me. The summoning rituals are a lot of work, but the community is adapting to it incredibly well. In the space of a few days we’ve gone from running around like headless chickens to a (mostly) well-oiled machine that (almost) always successfully completes the summon.

It is does speak very well of the TSW community. I’m mostly pretty cynical about gaming communities in general, but the amount of cooperation TSW’s players have displayed is impressive. In most other games this would probably be much more of a horror show.

Initially I found the summoning process tedious, and to some extent it still is, but it does feel good to be part of something greater. It’s gratifying to see a boss spawn and know that you had a hand in bringing it forth.

Even one of the more annoying aspects of the event, the fact that the lore is not a guaranteed drop, has been greatly mitigated by the community. When a lore piece does drop, someone will usually do a call-out in event chat so everyone can come and collect it. Sometimes that person is even me.

Also, while my own contributions on the matter were virtually non-existent, it was fascinating to watch the mystery unfold, to see the community fall ever deeper down the rabbit hole.

I have to wonder if this event is actually a fulfillment of a long-held promise, that of the puzzle raid.

Puzzle raids are something Funcom has been promising since the game launched, but which have never materialized. We’ve never gotten a terribly clear picture what they’ll look like, but the general impression was that they would be similar to investigation missions, but on a much larger scale — something requiring mass cooperation by many players.

Sort of like the Rider event.

Food for thought, anyway.

There has been a lot of wailing and gnashing of teeth over datamining in relation to the event, but it seems like a manufactured controversy to me.

To be clear, it is true that a small number of players did datamine the event’s details in their entirety, but I’ve not seen any hard evidence they actually influenced how the event played out. Aside from one or two people on the forums spewing off conspiracy theories and calling everyone sheep, all indications are the community solved everything legitimately.

From my perspective, it’s been an intriguing mystery, and a great way to bring the community together, and while it’s a long way from perfect, I’m glad to see Funcom is still capable of ambitious, out of the box thinking.

Playing MMOs can sometimes be something of an awkward fit for someone as antisocial as me, but at times like this I’m really glad I do. Seeing hundreds of people working together in common cause to orchestrate the summoning rituals is unlike anything you will ever experience in single-player games.

There is something truly special about events like this, and I always feel privileged to be a part of them. In time, I know I’ll forget the annoyances of this event, but the fond memories of mystery and cooperation will remain for many years to come.

It might not be over, either. The lore makes mention of “deep December,” which has some people wondering if our Rider friend may be visiting again over the holidays…

I woke up today feeling like it was Christmas morning. BlizzCon is always exciting, and after some of the hints we’ve seen, I was expecting some really huge news.

Instead, it’s turned out to be perhaps the most disappointing BlizzCon to date. Certainly the most disappointing since I’ve started following it closely.

Overwatch: The worst kept secret in gaming

They began with the announcement we all knew was coming: The hacker Sombra will be the next playable character in Overwatch.

I’ll give them some credit for announcing her in a pretty dramatic way. They began with a retrospective video of Overwatch’s launch, only for Sombra to hack the feed — I genuinely thought the stream was crashing for a bit — and for that to dovetail into a new animated short introducing Sombra as she aids her Talon allies in attacking Volskaya Industries.

Sombra looks a lot more interesting than Overwatch’s other antagonists to date. She has an agenda of her own and seems to be playing both sides — her loyalty to Talon seems far from absolute.

That said, Blizzard’s continued reticence to do anything with the Overwatch IP is making it increasingly hard for me to get excited about anything to do with the game.

I do appreciate that they are maintaining their commitment to diversity in Overwatch, if nothing else. Both characters added post-launch have been women of colour, and the game’s cast is now close to perfect gender parity, as well. Now at ten females, twelve males, one non-gendered.

They also announced a new “arcade” mode that mostly seems to involve death match arenas, some new maps, and an ambitious new eSports league, but again, not really interesting me.

StarCraft: SkyNet, Nova, and Stukov

StarCraft II is the only game coming out of this BlizzCon’s opening ceremony to offer me anything approaching genuine excitement, which is a sad commentary on the whole convention.

Firstly, the final installment of the Nova DLC was confirmed to be launching on November 22 (appropriately enough), which is welcome news. More Nova is always good, and now that all three parts are out, I can finally play through it.

Second, fan favourite and eternal badass Alexei Stukov has been confirmed as the next playable commander in co-op. He would count as a Zerg commander, I suppose, but he seems to be very unique, based mainly on infested versions of Terran buildings and units.

We’re short on details on exactly how Stukov is going to play at the moment, but it’s good to see more ambitious updates to co-op regardless. And those infested battlecruisers look pretty sweet.

Also, walking bunkers.

Yes.

They’ve also mentioned new co-op maps coming soon. Details on this are only now coming in as I’m writing, but it looks like we’re finally getting that co-op version of Outbreak we’ve all been wanting forever. Awesome!

On the downside, I’m also hearing Blizzard is going to add leaderboards to co-op —  a competitive aspect that I don’t think anyone wanted, and which may lead to co-op ending up on the same endless nerf/buff rollercoaster as 1v1.

Finally, perhaps the most interesting thing to come out of BlizzCon so far is that Blizzard has partnered with the DeepMind team to use StarCraft II for advanced artificial intelligence research. It’s at best unclear what if any benefits this will ultimately have for us as players, but the very fact that the game we love is now going to be at the forefront of AI research is really exciting.

Heroes and Hearthstone: Steady as she goes

Heroes of the Storm and Hearthstone are pretty much just chugging along as you’d expect. Nothing to complain about, but nothing to get particularly excited for, either.

As many expected, Varian Wrynn will be joining Heroes as its next playable character. Although I was expecting a very standard warrior, he’s looking to be one of the most unique heroes to date. He’s actually a multi-role hero (I wonder how that will work with quests?) who can radically change his capabilities through several crucial talent choices.

The other new hero is Ragnaros the Firelord. I don’t have any particularly strong feelings about him at the moment.

They also spent a lot of time talking about next week’s brawl. I’m not sure why a weekly brawl is worth so much attention in the opening ceremonies. Were they just trying to fill time?

Meanwhile, Hearthstone is of course getting another expansion, Mean Streets of Gadgetzan. I don’t have a lot of interest in Hearthstone, and I don’t see this expansion changing that, but I will say they seem to have some neat ideas. Tri-class cards are pretty creative, and the Kabal and Jade Lotus factions seem genuinely interesting — would love to explore them in WoW.

Diablo: Remake, necromancer, and disappointment

But by far the biggest disappointment came when they finally got around to Diablo announcements. After the necromancer leak, I was sure we were finally getting another expansion to wrap up Reaper of Souls’ cliff-hanger ending.

Nope.

We are getting the necromancer as a paid DLC, but no new story content. They did mention two new zones (as free updates), but they’re going to be adventure-mode exclusives like Greyhollow Island. Something to poke your head into for an hour and then forget about.

The other big news is that the first Diablo game is being recreated within Diablo III. We’ll be able to use our existing characters, so I guess the original classes aren’t coming back, but they will be bringing back at least some of the original mechanics (including intentionally making the graphics look worse, because apparently common sense and the Diablo franchise have severed all ties).

This is a confusing decision, and I’m not sure who the target audience is. I can understand trying to capitalize on some nostalgia, and broadly I like the idea of resurrecting old games, but it’s going to be too different from the original to satisfy the purists, and I’m not sure how much modern gamers are going to enjoy something that has been deliberately designed to be more clunky and visually unappealing than current content.

Diablo III badly needed a new expansion. There are so many story threads left unfinished, so many lands left to explore. The game can’t survive on adventure mode and seasons forever. I want to play more, but there’s just nothing left in the game for me to do. The base game and its expansion were wildly successful, and there can be no doubt a new expansion would do well. I just don’t get it.

The necromancer does look cool — I love necromancers in general, and Diablo’s take on the archetype especially — but is it worth forking over cash just to play through exactly the same content as a new character?

I hate how gamers are always pronouncing premature death on games, but at the risk of hypocrisy, I think we may now declare Diablo III dead in the water. Yes, it’s getting some more updates, but there doesn’t seem to be any kind of true forward momentum here. The story has been abandoned unfinished, and the game is just chasing its tail.

Between this, StarCraft’s apparent abandonment of mission packs, and Overwatch’s inexplicable aversion to exploring its own lore, I’m beginning to wonder if Blizzard is simply moving away from narrative in its games altogether.

That’s pretty much the only thing that could finally break my lifelong Blizzard fandom.

* * *

And that’s it. Nothing at all announced for World of Warcraft. No mention of a Warcraft movie sequel. Undoubtedly more news is to come as the convention unfolds, but it’s not likely to be anything huge.

What a massive disappointment.

This year’s BlizzCon didn’t exactly get off to a strong start. It’s worth noting I’ve experienced a significant traffic spike over the past two days, and from what I can tell it’s mostly from people Googling “BlizzCon disappointment” and similar phrases.

That said, for all the disappointment of the opening ceremony and the way Diablo is falling apart, there has been some good news in the subsequent talks and panels. World of Warcraft, especially, is coming out of the convention looking very good, despite being all but ignored by the opening ceremony.

The road ahead:

Blizzard amazed all and sundry by discussing not one, not two, but three upcoming content patches for WoW.

First up is patch 7.1.5, a minor patch adding a few tweaks and new systems. Brawler’s Guild will be returning with new content, which should excite both of the people who play it.

They’re also adding a new series of micro holidays that will only last for a day or two. They’re going out of their way to make these not particularly rewarding, even in regards to cosmetics. That’s nice in that it’s no big deal if you miss logging in for such brief events, but it makes me wonder what the point of these things even is.

Finally, the one thing in 7.1.5 that interests me is that Mists of Pandaria dungeons will now be included in Timewalking. Mists was probably the best dungeons have ever been, so that’s welcome.

Most of the big news, though, focuses on the next major patch: 7.2, Tomb of Sargeras. As the name would imply, we’ll return to the Broken Shore to confront the Legion at their beachhead. Obviously the Tomb will be a raid, with figures like Kil’jaeden and the Avatar of Sargeras as bosses.

I’m kind of not sure how to feel about this. Where do they even go from here? Like, how do you escalate from fighting basically the entire Legion command structure? This is only the second patch…

There will also be a new faction to grind reputation with, Legionfall. I’m already having flashbacks to the ungodly Suramar grind, but rep grinding seems to be par for the course this expansion, so I guess we’ll have to roll with it.

Otherwise, though, it’s looking like a really promising patch.

The best news is probably on the dungeon front. Not only is the Tomb of Sargeras going to have a five-man wing, the Cathedral of Eternal Night, which will not be mythic-only, but all current mythic-only dungeons will gain queueable heroic modes (Karazhan will be divided into two wings to make it more manageable).

This is simply fantastic news. The WoW developers learning from their mistakes is shocking enough, but the fact they’re doing so relatively quickly is all but unheard of. It’s almost like they have some humility, or they value all their players equally or something.

Furthering the impression that Blizzard may actually value multiple playstyles, the class storylines will continue in patch 7.2, and there will be a new artifact appearance earned through a difficult solo challenge. More emphasis on skill rather than grind is always a good thing.

Next, flying will return in 7.2. We don’t have a lot of details on what the second half of Pathfinder will entail, but I’m expecting a lot of rep grinding. Not looking forward to that, but I am glad that we now have a clear answer on flight’s fate, and that it isn’t something we’ll have to wait until the very end of the expansion for.

On top of that, we’ll also be getting unique class-specific flying mounts. Some will even have multiple variations for different specs.

Rogues will get a crow.

A crow.

I’m not normally the sort of person who gets particularly excited about mounts, but crows are awesome, and a nice, unpretentious crow or raven mount has been my most-wanted mount for years now. The class mounts require exalted with Legionfall and completion of the new class story, so I doubt I’ll bother for most characters, but I need that crow in my life.

Another cool-sounding feature in 7.2 is the addition of Legion invasions. These will be similar to the pre-expansion event, but tied into the world quest system. They’ll only be in the Broken Isles, which is a bit of a shame, but the pre-expansion invasions were a lot of fun, so I’m looking forward to these.

The final major addition currently announced for 7.2 is the addition of a PvP brawl mode, similar to the brawl modes that have proliferated to virtually every Blizzard game seemingly overnight.

I don’t PvP much, so I personally have no particular opinion on the matter, but I do not think this will go over well. WoW players are not the sort of people who like surprises or adapting to unusual mechanics. They like things safe, predictable, and rigidly balanced.

Overall, 7.2 is not without its worrying aspects, but overall it’s shaping up to be a very promising patch.

Lastly, they provided a brief teaser for the next major patch after 7.2: We’re going to Argus.

Not sure how to feel about this. Thanks to my enmity for the Draenei, I’ve long-dreaded the seemingly inevitable foray to their sparkly, lore-breaking homeworld. But I guess the silver lining is that it will just be a patch, not a whole expansion.

It’s another thing that makes me wonder where we go from here, though. How do you follow up “invade the Legion’s homeworld and kick the asses of all their leaders”?

The rest:

There’s been a bit more non-WoW news, as well.

Haunted Mines will at last be returning to Heroes of the Storm, with some tweaks to its design. I don’t play Heroes much anymore, but I always liked Haunted Mines, so it’s heartening on some level to see it returning.

Heroes is also getting some tweaks to its leveling mechanics. Hero levels will now be (nearly) infinite, levels past ten will be quicker to acquire, and every level will now have some form of reward. Seems pretty similar to Overwatch, but with less RNG. Sounds good.

Diablo is getting an absolutely bizarre new mode called challenge rifts. As I understand it, they’ll randomly select a player out of the entire game’s community, and then for the rest of the week everyone in the game will be able to play a clone of their character — same skills, same gear — to compete on leaderboards.

Oookaay…?

Otherwise, the Diablo fanbase is pretty much rioting and setting fire to cars right now. I’m still feeling pretty bitter myself. Reaper of Souls was so good, and I was so excited for what was to come. Now it looks Diablo III is simply being abandoned, at least as an actual RPG with a narrative.

I just don’t understand what’s going through the minds of the people at Blizzard. RoS was a big success by pretty much every conceivable metric. Why not keep the momentum up? Why are they just throwing in the towel?

I’ve actually been giving serious thought to writing my own fan fic “expansion”* just to satisfy my own sanity. Wouldn’t exactly be the first time I’ve done something like that.

*(With black! And hookers!)

Instead of doing a top ten list of all my favourite video games, I’ve decided it’s more fair to rank my favourite older and newer games separately, five each. I’ve already covered the old school greats, so now it’s time to run down my top five games from the modern era.

5: Dungeon Siege III

Entry #24601 in the “things Tyler loves that everyone else hates” category is Dungeon Siege III.

It is a very big departure from the previous games in terms of game mechanics. Part of me misses the old model. But looked at on its own merits, it’s still quite a strong RPG.

Choosing a class (or character in this case) is more generic than just playing and evolving naturally, but the “class” designs are among the best I’ve seen. Lucas is just your standard warrior dude, but the others are more unique:  Reinhardt is a steampunk techno mage; Katarina is a gun-toting, curse-flinging gypsy witch; and Anjali is a divine warrior-priestess who can shapeshift into a fire elemental.

Anjali in particular is one of my all-time favourite characters/classes in any RPG. Just so much fun.

And while it was a departure in terms of gameplay, it’s a true sequel to the original Dungeon Siege in terms of story, something DS2 definitely wasn’t. In fact it improves upon the already strong lore of the original, deepening and expanding it, and it evolves into a complex, powerful story with an incredible ending.

Add some gorgeous graphics and a lovely soundtrack and you have one of the most underrated games ever.

4: Portal 2

Much has already been said about the Portal games by myself and others, so I don’t see a lot of need to repeat it. If you’ve played them, you know how special they are. If you haven’t, go do that right now. I’ll wait.

Both games were good, but I think Portal 2 is the more memorable one. The first Portal was entirely too short. Portal 2 had all the same wit and creativity, and while it’s still a relatively short game, it’s not quite the “blink and you’ll miss it” affair the first was.

3: Mass Effect 3

And again another of my unpopular opinions.

While I seem to be the only one that feels this way, I found Mass Effect 3 to be the strongest entry in the trilogy by a significant margin. I’ve always been a fan of epic, apocalyptic stories, and ME3 certainly delivers on that front. In the previous games, the Reapers were a distant threat, but in ME3 their full fury is unleashed, and as the game unfolds, you get to see them tear the galaxy apart in excruciating detail.

It’s a dark, intense story, and I admire that it pulls no punches. The heroes fail many times throughout the story, and the losses are deeply felt. Not many games have the guts for that.

Like ME2, it’s also a very big game with lots of side missions and secondary content, but unlike ME2, none of it feels irrelevant or chore-like. Everything connects to the main story. Everything feels important, and exciting.

Even the most minor side-quests can be memorable. For me one of the most gut-wrenching moments of the game is a brief side mission where you assist in the evacuation of the Elcor homeworld. It’s just the most basic kind of collection quest, but the ambassador’s reaction at the end is so powerful.

And then there’s the excellence that is the Rannoch arc, and the sheer joy of drunk Tali, and all the little conversations between the crew members between missions, and Traynor… It’s just an excellent experience all around.

2: StarCraft II

StarCraft II’s sheer scale can make it a difficult game to rate. It has had two expansions the size of standalone games plus a fair bit of DLC. Looked at as a total package, StarCraft II is now massive in scale.

And it has had its stumbles along the way. Wings of Liberty was mostly a good game but did suffer from Blizzard’s failed experiment with non-linear storytelling, and I think we can all agree Heart of the Swarm was something of a disappointment.

But when you look at the big picture, it’s clear StarCraft II’s successes easily outweigh its failures. Despite its hiccups, Wings of the Liberty still wound up being a pretty strong story, and Legacy of the Void was one of the greatest sci-fi epics I’ve seen in gaming. Hell, even Heart of the Swarm gave us Abathur and the Primal Zerg, so it was hardly a total loss.

Similarly, I’m not without complaints about its gameplay, but overall SC2 still deserves to go down as one of the great RTS games of all time. The campaigns have featured some of the most creative level design in gaming history, the co-op mode added in Legacy of the Void is infinitely replayable and incredibly fun, and its competitive play remains one of the greatest tests of skill in the gaming world.

1: The Secret World

I’ve already spent no shortage of time raving about how amazing TSW is, so I shouldn’t repeat myself too much.

A lot of my love for this game boils down to the fact that story will always be the most important part of gaming for me, and TSW has some of the best writing in video game history. Its dialogue is second to none, its characters are unforgettable, its world-building is spectacularly deep and incredibly original, and its ambiance is like nothing else.

But it’s no slouch in the gameplay department, either. I love how you can build your own “class.” I love that it’s challenging, but not cheap. I love how the enemies are powerful and intelligent rather than just HP sponges to be mowed down. I love that its progression is fair to all playstyles and offers incredible freedom to the player. I love how many awesome cosmetics there are to collect.

As with the first list’s winner, Warcraft III, The Secret World is probably as close to a perfect video game as we’re ever going to see.

Honourable mentions:

Despite some initial stumbles (and a few lingering problems), Diablo III has evolved into a really excellent game, as the hundreds of hours I’ve sunk into it can attest. It was sort of a dead heat between Diablo and Dungeon Siege for the fifth spot in this list.

Something that has been interesting about recent years in the gaming industry has been the growing push for video games as art, and it’s produced a number of titles that are truly amazing experiences despite being light on gameplay. The Park, Oxenfree, and Remember Me all come to mind as examples of this.

Obviously World of Warcraft is conspicuous in its absence from the list, but despite the countless hours I’ve spent with it, it has far too many flaws to be considered a truly great game. SW:TOR is another title that has given me some great times but has too much wrong with it to earn a spot among my all-time favourites.

It does seem a bit strange that I’ve spent the majority of my gaming time over the past ten years playing MMOs, and yet only one of them made my top five (albeit with top honours). I’m not sure what, if anything, should be read from that.

I’m generally pretty optimistic when it comes to video games (probably the only way in which I’m optimistic, especially after this week). However, recent events, and most especially this year’s BlizzCon, have gotten me worried as a fan of Blizzard Entertainment’s games, and their stories especially.

While it could just be a coincidence, I can’t escape the feeling that Blizzard as a company seems to be moving away from telling stories with its games lately.

Perhaps I’m simply being paranoid, but it seemed a thought worth giving voice to, so it became the topic of my latest article for MMO Bro. Head on over to read my thoughts on the apparent shift away from story in Blizzard’s games, and why it matters.

While you’re there, you could also check out my thoughts on the World of Warcraft announcements from this most recent BlizzCon.

For all its faults, at least WoW is still embracing its lore.

Recently I was taking a walk down nostalgia lane, listing off some of my favourite older games. This put me in mind of how much I missed some of them and wished those franchises were still around.

Some random morose Googling later, I stumbled across No One Lives Forever Revival Edition. This is a free fan-made update of both No One Lives Forever games that will run on modern operating systems.

I was a little suspicious at first, but I did some research, and it all seemed legit. Download seemed to take longer than it should have, but once it finished, I was able to install both games successfully, and they work!

The Operative holds up really, really well. I just launched it to see if it worked, and the next thing I know I’m halfway through Misfortune in Morocco.

I wondered if perhaps some of my love of the game was just due to nostalgia, but that’s definitely not the case. If anything it may be better in some ways than I remember. The core gameplay is still silky smooth and intensely satisfying, and the writing shines as much as ever. This game is just so clever, so much fun.

It’s a small thing, but something I really appreciate about NOLF is that pistols are actually a viable option. I like pistols aesthetically, but in most shooters they’re pretty weak compared to the other options. In NOLF, they’re actually pretty good.

The people behind the Revival even tweaked the graphics a bit. No One Lives Forever now supports widescreen format and HD resolutions, the anti-aliasing looks better, and to me it seems like the textures and lighting are popping a little more. It won’t be mistaken for a modern game, but the graphics were good for their day, and with the tweaks, they’re holding up pretty well all things considered.

I have encountered a few issues here and there, but nothing game-breaking. Most notably all the keybindings were messed up at first for some reason, but it was nothing a few minutes of rebinding couldn’t fix.

I don’t know if I’ll play through the whole game again. I’ve played this game an enormous amount, even if the last time was about fifteen years ago. I can still quote most of the conversations verbatim. Says something to just how memorable the game was/is.

That said, I do feel kind of tempted to at least get to Unexpected Turbulence… or maybe Rendezvous in Hamburg. Always liked that one.

I went into No One Lives Forever 2 long enough to verify that it works, but I didn’t explore it in any depth. I do plan to play through it, though. It’s another game I missed out on due to Real Life, so it’s all new to me.

I’m kind of nervous, honestly. After how brilliant the first was, and after so much time, how can it possibly live up to expectations? I feel disappointment may be inevitable. And I know they replaced the voice actress for Cate Archer, which is a heinous sin.

But still, I need closure.

Now, I will be honest: This Revival Edition is essentially piracy, and normally I don’t approve of that. I believe that creators should be paid for their works.

But there are a number of extenuating circumstances here.

Firstly, and perhaps most importantly, there is no legal way to obtain a copy of either NOLF game anymore (short of finding an original disc, and good luck with that). They haven’t been for sale in a very long time, and they’ve fallen into a legal limbo that may prevent them from ever going on sale again. I’d pay for these games if I could, but I can’t. It’s simply not an option.

Secondly, these games are classics. I don’t know about NOLF2 (yet), but The Operative is easily one of the greatest games ever made. It should not be lost to history. It deserves to be kept alive. Newer gamers need to have the opportunity to experience it.

So in this case I think it’s better to keep the games alive, no matter the method.

If you’ve never played No One Lives Forever before, I highly you take the opportunity to do so now and enjoy one of the high water marks of the gaming industry. And if you have played them before, enjoy them all over again in HD!

I’m making it a goal to finish every class story in Star Wars: The Old Republic. I’ve already done half of them, and with all the various different experience boosts I’ve accrued over the past few months, I can afford to skip everything but the class missions themselves when leveling a new character. That makes each class story quite a quick, breezy affair.

I’ve spent the large majority of my time on the Imperial side so far, so it’s time to show the Republic some love. I’m starting with trooper. This actually isn’t my original trooper that I created when I first tried the class a few months ago, but a new one I started recently with a different subclass and appearance.

The mission:

I’ll be upfront: This was probably my least favourite class story to date.

Chapter one was somewhat interesting. It’s a good premise, anyway. Not exactly what you’d expect, and it gives you a strong personal motivation. I don’t want to say too much because it’s a pretty good twist, and I don’t want to spoil it.

However, it had issues. Normally I’m not one to complain about the lack of meaningful choice in this game — it does a good job of presenting the illusion your choices matter, even though they usually don’t — but in this case it really did feel like I had no say in things. This was a rare case where I usually wanted to spare my enemies, but I never seemed to have the chance.

And in general chapter one’s story wasn’t explored in enough depth. You learn some disturbing things, but nothing ever comes of those revelations.

Unfortunately, flawed though it was, chapter one was still the highlight of the story. I literally just finished the story before writing this, and I’ve already forgotten much of the last two chapters. They’re that forgettable.

Spoiler alert: You shoot Imperials. That’s basically the whole story.

Something else that bothered me is how flat the trooper himself feels. Normally in this game I can quickly get a good feel for who my character is, where they came from, and what their goals and ideals are. My trooper just felt like a soulless avatar the whole way through.

I’ve heard and enjoyed Brian Bloom in several other game roles, and I know he’s a good voice actor, so I don’t think it’s his fault. Either my creativity has failed me, or the writing for the trooper was just that bland.

I have mixed feelings on the class’s gameplay. I liked this subclass a lot on my bounty hunter, but the trooper’s animations don’t have nearly as much flair, and it turns out to be another class that suffers badly from the inevitable button boat as you level. Always good to enjoy your class less the higher level you get.

I’m trying to unlearn the desire for min/maxing drilled into me by the MMO community and ignore the stupid fiddly extra abilities that are important for optimal DPS in a raid scenario but largely unnecessary when just messing around on my own, but it’s difficult.

That said, there are a few things I did like about the trooper story.

For starters, the actual mechanical design is a little better than average. The cutscenes are a little more cinematic feeling, and the mission design is a bit more creative — there’s the occasional simple puzzle, for instance.

Doesn’t make a big difference, but the effort deserves recognition, at least.

I also found it interesting how incredibly bad the Republic looks in the trooper story. There seems to be no end to the corruption and incompetence within the Republic hierarchy, and at times your superiors can be so nasty they’d fit right in with the Sith.

I think the trooper story did a better job of making the Republic unlikable than most of the Imperial stories have.

The squad:

The companions for the trooper also mostly failed to impress.

I found Jorgan absolutely intolerable out of the gate. When even I think you’re too uptight and hyper-critical, you really have a problem. Even the Sith are over here like, “Whoa, dude, lay off that Haterade.”

To be fair, though, the later missions do put him in a better light. I wouldn’t say I like him now, but he has earned a certain degree of (grudging) respect from me. At the very least, I don’t want to make a rug out of him anymore.

Vik, on the other hand, was utterly unlikable from beginning to end. Just a slimeball on every level. This is another case where I wished for greater choice, because he really deserved to be dishonourably discharged (again) the moment he was no longer useful.

I don’t know what to make of 4X. He’s equal parts comical, inspiring, and horrifying. I genuinely can’t tell if he’s a somewhat tone-deaf attempt at comedy relief, or a subversive criticism of blind patriotism, or both, or neither.

Yuun seems cool, though they didn’t do much with him. Would have been nice to get to know him better, learn what exactly it is a Findsman does.

Elara, at least, was somewhat interesting.

Halfway through the story I realized I’d much rather be playing as Elara than my own character, actually. Not because I like Elara so much — I like her, but there are plenty of other characters in the game I like better — but because she has a really compelling character arc. The Imperial defector desperately trying to prove herself in the face of constant scorn and suspicion. That’s a much better hook than… whatever the player’s motivation is supposed to be.

I’m not sure she should have been a romance option, though. I did romance her anyway just for completionism’s sake, but it doesn’t seem to suit her character very well.

At least you get all your companions much quicker than in most stories (before the end of chapter two). That’s always nice.

Not really a complaint, but one thing I did find a bit odd is how similar the first three companions are. Jorgan, Elara, and 4X are all super uptight, serious, patriotic types. At least it makes farming influence easy, since they all approve of the same things nine times out of ten.

The future:

Five down, three to go.

I’m not entirely sure which I’ll do next. Bounty hunter has the strongest appeal, but I think I’d prefer to hold off on it for precisely that reason.

I’m thinking maybe smuggler next. Initially it was the class that least appealed to me, but I did finally make one and play her long enough to finish the first planet, and while I’m still not sold on the class’s concept, I do like the character I came up with, and the voice actress for female smugglers turns out to be a lot of fun.

Whatever I pick, it might have to wait a few weeks, at least. I’m thinking I’ll dive into the Overwatch free weekend that starts today, and then the final part of the Nova DLC in StarCraft will finally launch, so I’m going to play that for sure. Knights of the Eternal Throne will launch shortly thereafter. So I’ll be busy for a while.

With my Star Trek rewatch wrapping up, I was looking for something new to watch on Netflix. Enter Glitch. I’d not heard of this show, but the premise seemed intriguing, so I decided to give it a shot. What I discovered was an intriguing, if flawed, series.

So far, only the first season is available, and it’s extremely short (only six episodes), so it seemed to make more sense to review the entire season instead of going episode by episode.

The other walking dead:

Glitch is a show with a simple yet unusual premise. One night, in a small town in rural Australia, a number of dead people claw their way out of their graves. Confused and frightened, they are found by a local police officer named James, and a doctor named Elishia.

They are not zombies. They’re not animate corpses. They appear to have been truly resurrected, restored to life in apparently perfect health.

This despite the fact that all of them have been dead and buried for years. The most newly deceased is Kate, James’ wife, who died of cancer two years previously. The eldest is Patrick Fitzgerald, the town’s founder, who has been dead since the nineteenth century.

In between those extremes are a diverse collection of deceased. The kind and gentlemanly Charlie was a soldier in the First World War. Carlo met his end in the 40s. Maria is a pious Italian housewife who fell in the 1960s. Kirstie was a wild child before her untimely death in the late 80s. One, found in an unmarked grave, has no memories at all and is simply labelled John Doe.

It falls to James and Elishia to hide the Risen (as they are called) as sinister forces begin to seek them out. As for the Risen themselves, they are left to struggle with life after death. Many of them are alone in the world, their friends and family having died long ago, yet for those who still have relations among the living, the path may be harder still.

It’s certainly an interesting premise. I can’t say I’ve ever seen anything quite like it. The mystery is intriguing, but there may be a little too much of it.

You would think that a show with such a short season would waste no time, but in fact Glitch is a very slow-paced show that is very stingy with its answers. Most of the questions you probably have right now if this is your first time hearing about the show are questions I still have, even after seeing every episode.

There is going to be a second season, so there’s still time to explain things, but I don’t like being strung along like this.

It also turn into a bit of a soap opera sometimes. Being who I am, I am of course most interested in the fantastical elements of the show, but Glitch spends more time on interpersonal relationships and who’s sleeping with who this week. It can get a bit tiresome.

Glitch also features my least favourite kind of story: the love triangle. And this is a really good example of why I hate love triangles so much. It takes up a lot of screentime while doing nothing whatsoever to advance the story. It accomplishes nothing but to make every character involved look like a total sleazebag.

On that note, another issue with Glitch is that most of the characters are pretty unlikable. It lessens the drama when you don’t care about half the cast.

The good news is that the characters that I do like, I really like.

By far the highlight of the show is Charlie. His earnest, good-hearted nature does wonders to make the otherwise grim tone of the series easier to bear.

I’m also rather fond of Kirstie. She’s not the most level-headed person, but her spunk can be endearing, and she has one of the better stories in the show. I won’t spoil too much, but the most powerful scene in the season comes from her exploring her tragic past. It’s very powerful.

Patrick grew on me after a while, too. He’s a bit of a lowlife in some ways, but he’s not without his own odd form of charm.

Those three are what carry the show. Even if I’m frustrated by the slow pace or sneering at the rest of the cast, I’m enjoying the stories of Charlie, Kirstie, and Patrick enough to make Glitch worthwhile.

Overall rating: 7.3/10 Probably not going to be your new favourite show, but it might be worth a look if you want to try something different.

I had been planning to spend this past weekend playing Overwatch during its free event, but I grew bored with it in record time. Not wanting to start another storyline in The Old Republic just yet, I looked to other options.

And then I saw the huge ad for Elder Scrolls Online on my Steam homepage, looking all sexy and winking seductively at me.

I’ve often talked about returning to the game, but this sure isn’t how I expected it to happen.

A new face:

They were holding a big sale on cash shop currency, so I decided to buy a recustomization token and tweak my character’s appearance. I had long planned to change her hairstyle, but I wound up adjusting her face a fair bit, too.

When I started playing, I knew almost nothing Elder Scrolls lore, and I had no idea what sort of person my character would be, so I defaulted to my go-to of a serious, militaristic character. But now I know a lot more about Bosmer, and a stern-faced, disciplined woman didn’t seem to fit anymore.

I came to view my character more as a darkly playful trickster. She’ll greet you with smile, and she’ll eat you with a smile.

So now she has loose hair and softer, friendlier features. I also made her a little shorter, because now I know Bosmer are supposed to be tiny. I think she might still be a little on the tall side for Bosmer, but she shouldn’t be head and shoulders above her own people anymore.

Before.

After.

Also horns because why not.

The lack of a wardrobe system still rankles me quite a lot, though. I love the outfit I have now, but I’m going to outlevel it soon. That’s honestly been one of the things holding me back from playing more. You can get costumes in the cash shop, but the selection is woefully inadequate; apparently the developers regularly remove outfits, which seems very wrong-headed.

I did grab one costume that’s okay, but it doesn’t quite fit her barbaric aesthetic. At least it shows off her tattoos.

Exploring One Tamriel:

As MMOs are wont to do, the game has changed a bit since I played last. One nice thing is that you now get additional skill points for leveling up, so I had a bunch of points to spend upon logging in. I always did feel starved for enough skill points to do everything I wanted to, so it’s quite welcome.

But of course the big change is One Tamriel, which has united the world with universal level scaling (both and up and down, which is a rarity) and relaxed faction barriers.

Theoretically I think the level-scaling is a great idea, but in practice I don’t see it affecting me much. It seems to be of more benefit to people who are already far-progressed in the game. Yes, I can jump ahead to high level zones now, but why would I want to? Might as well keep playing through the story.

The faction changes are a little more interesting. Just for the novelty, I decided to hop on my horse and spend a few hours sightseeing in some of the zones for the other two alliances.

I’ve always felt the graphics in ESO were overrated, but after visiting Glenumbra, I’m not so sure anymore. That zone is gorgeous. I’m an Aldmeri loyalist to the end, but that place is far nicer than any of our zones.

Meanwhile, the Ebonheart Pact zones are… interesting. I had written Elder Scrolls off as purely low fantasy, but then I got to the Dunmer zones and it’s all giant mushrooms and ash raining from the sky and glowing fungi and floating brain-tentacle monsters. It’s definitely a change of pace.

I also made a point to visit the capitols of the other factions. That’s one thing the Aldmeri definitely win. The Covenant capitol is barely distinguishable from any other random town, and while the Pact city is neat, it’s nothing compared to Elden Root.

Of course, like any self-respecting Bosmer, I made a point to grab some “souvenirs” from the palaces of both rival factions. I had a terrible misunderstanding involving a lockbox in the Pact council chambers and several heavily armed guards, but I somehow managed to escape and proceeded to flee north across Dunmer territory.

When I logged off for the night, I was camped out in the woods of eastern Skyrim, waiting for the heat to die off. It’s another lovely zone, actually — not a bad place to be stranded, as these things go.

So now what?

I enjoyed revisited Elder Scrolls Online. It’s pretty rare for a game to be able to hold my attention without constant action and/or gripping story, but I just gladly spent several hours doing little but sightseeing. That says something.

Of course, the biggest reason I stopped playing wasn’t that I didn’t like it. I stopped because I didn’t have time, and with many other games currently demanding my attention, that’s still true. I might make more of an effort to carve out some time for it here or there, though, and I’d still like to sit down and really delve deep into the game at some point. If I can find the time.

I’ll be upfront here, guys: I don’t have a lot to say about this. I just wanted an excuse to talk about the Warcraft movie some more.

Recently I picked it up on DVD, and I took the time to watch through all the deleted scenes. I know that over forty minutes of footage was cut from the theatrical release, and much as I enjoyed the movie, it definitely suffered for it. Like many people, I had hoped for a director’s cut, but I suppose the deleted scenes are the next best thing.

So did they change my view of the movie? Kind of, maybe?

Firstly it needs to be said I don’t think the DVD contains all of the deleted content. It took me less than half an hour to watch it all, so the math doesn’t add up.

It’s also a bit hard to judge things when the scenes are all out of context. Some don’t have all their special effects done, either, which is distracting.

There are also some scenes that probably deserved to be deleted. I didn’t need to see anymore of Garona and Lothar’s relationship, and the bit with Khadgar being all edgy to Antonidas didn’t add much. Actually I rather object to Antonidas being portrayed as some spineless politician. He’s supposed one of the truest heroes of the Alliance, a man of vision and principle.

But there are quite a few scenes that I wish could have been included in the theatrical cut. For the most part they’re not big or dramatic scenes, but quieter moments that flesh out the characters and the world. There are some cut scenes from Draenor that add some further depth to the Orcs, on a cultural and individual level.

As a fan, I really enjoyed getting to see more of Ironforge, and Stormwind, and hearing Grom Hellscream actually talk. It’s also a real shame Chris Metzen’s cameo didn’t make it into the theatrical cut.

I think smaller scenes like this add a real texture to the movie, make the world and its inhabitants feel more real. It’s unfortunate they were excluded from the theatrical version.

Otherwise, my feelings on the Warcraft film remain largely unchanged. It’s got flaws, but its strengths outweigh them — same as every other part of the franchise, really. I still think Garona and Gul’dan totally stole the show, while the human characters were merely adequate — I must admit my patience for movie Lothar wore thin on second viewing. I still love the soundtrack, and it’s still a thrill to see Azeroth brought to life so vividly.

If you’re wondering whether the DVD is worth picking up for the extras, I would say yes, but then again I’m the eternal fanboy when it comes to Warcraft, so I guess take my opinion with a grain of salt.

Blizzard has at last released the third and final installment of its Nova Covert Ops story DLC. Having waiting for all three parts, I played through it all in one go.

Despite the fact Nova is one of my favourite characters from all of fiction, I admit I had a fair degree of trepidation going into Covert Ops. Legacy of the Void was a really tough act to follow, and with DLC there’s always the concern that quality will drop, that it will turn out to be just a cheap cash grab.

I shouldn’t have worried.

Rogue agent!

As revealed in its initial trailer, Covert Ops begins with Nova awakening in a mysterious lab, with her memory wiped. A message on her visor warns her of imminent danger, spurring her to enact a daring escape from her mysterious captors.

What follows is a blisteringly fast-paced adventure as Nova discovers a conspiracy that threatens to bring the Terran Dominion to its knees and cost countless innocent lives.

In practical terms this takes the form of a nine mission campaign in which the player commands both Nova herself and the elite black ops forces under her command.

As with previous StarCraft II campaigns, there are unique progression mechanics that allow your troops to grow in power and gain new options as the campaign progresses. In this case, the mechanic is equipment, for both Nova and her units.

Nova herself can choose from a variety of guns, gadgets, and different types of armour to radically alter her stats and abilities. Weapons include everything from her standard sniper rifle to a shotgun, a lightsaber, and even more exotic options still, while different armours can boost her energy, permanently cloak her, or even grant her the use of a jetpack similar to those used by reapers.

Unit equipment is a little different. There’s a shared pool of upgrades, but each upgrade can only be equipped to one unit type. If your siege tanks have spider mines, no other units can equip spider mines. Certain upgrades can have different effects depending on the unit, too, so it’s important to check all the possible combinations.

The number of options is impressive, especially for such a short campaign. If you factor all the possible combinations of different guns and gadgets Nova can equip, there are in essence a few dozen different versions of Nova you can play with — at least. Want to be a tanky melee brawler? Go for it. Want to be a stealthy ranged sniper? Also cool. Want to dance up and down cliffs, hurling grenades left and right? Yeah, you can do that too. And that’s not even the limit of all the different things Nova can do.

The mission design takes this versatility into account, too. Some missions have been specifically designed to have many different potential strategies that can lead to victory, from stealth to brute force and everything in between. The amount of thought that has gone into some missions is truly impressive.

Mission design has always been one of StarCraft II’s greatest strengths, and even after all this time, they’re still coming up with creative new ideas. Highlights this time included a high speed getaway on a vulture bike that practically turned StarCraft into a driving game, and a very clever mission that played out almost like a choose your own adventure novel, allowing you to dictate what to face and how the mission would play out. Incredibly clever.

And that’s without even getting into the seamless way the campaign blends between traditional RTS gameplay, RPG segments (including some epic and intense boss fights), and more exotic sequences like the aforementioned vulture scene.

There’s a still a certain bias towards shorter missions and missions with hard time limits, but there are also a few that take a more sedate pace, and overall the campaign feels pretty well-balanced.

They didn’t skimp on the difficulty, either. I was only playing on hard, but even so the final missions were incredibly nail-biting. As I’m writing this, I still haven’t entirely come off my adrenaline high.

Of course you can always play on lower difficulties if you’re not in the mood to test yourself too much, but if you want to push your skills to the limit, Covert Ops definitely delivers.

The past doesn’t matter:

Covert Ops is virtually flawless from a game mechanics perspective, but it doesn’t disappoint on the artistic front, either.

Visually it’s a great experience. The graphical fidelity of Blizzard’s cutscenes just keeps getting higher, and there’s plenty of them to enjoy.

The in-game graphics are holding their own, too. Blizzard’s good at giving their games ageless artstyles, so while StarCraft II is a few years old now, it doesn’t look it, and they’re still making improvements. In a ruined cityscape, skyscrapers fall to form bridges over chasms. On an ice world, you can see frost form on your units’ armour.

The music is also excellent. In a departure from the guitar-heavy sounds we’re used to from the Terrans, Covert Ops’ soundtrack leans more on synth and orchestral sounds reminiscent of Mass Effect (yet another case of overlap between the two franchises — seriously, I just learned there’s a ship in Andromeda called the Hyperion; come on, man).

The story is, in a word, fun. It’s very intense and thrilling, with little chance to catch your breath, and it captures the cool factor of being an elite ghost operative very well.

And while the focus is on Nova, there are plenty of appearances by other familiar faces. At this point I just can’t help but smile whenever I hear the familiar guitar strums and Swann shows up to drop off a new toy. It’s Pavlovian.

It’s not all Terrans making cameos, either…

Although it’s very different in a lot of ways, there’s a quality about Covert Ops that reminds me of Mass Effect’s Citadel DLC a bit. There’s that same feeling of a final gift to the fans.

There are a lot of little things that add flavour, too. Study the maps on your briefing screen and you’ll find interesting little factoids about local landmarks and the history of whatever world you’re on.

I love things like that. It’s the small details that really make games come alive.

A lot of the twists and reveals are easy to see coming, especially if you know StarCraft lore, but there is one reversal near the end that caught me off guard in a very welcome way.

If I’m being honest, there are some flaws in the story. While it’s not as rushed as I worried it might be going in, it’s still kind of rushed. There’s isn’t a whole lot of time to flesh out the characters, so they tend to feel a bit flat.

Even Nova herself doesn’t get as much development as you might expect. Nova’s a very deep character with a lot of complexity, but you don’t really see that in Covert Ops. If you haven’t read the books, you might not be able to readily understand why she behaves as she does in the story.

If I’m to continue being honest, though, I’m not sure I care. Maybe these flaws will begin to rankle me after I’ve had time to digest, but right now the sheer cool factor of Covert Ops is enough to make me forgive any sins.

The cold, analytical part of my mind is pointing out ways it could be better, but the rest of me is like, “I JUST VAPOURIZED HALF A BATTALION WITH A PLASMA RIFLE, AND NOW I’M MIND-CONTROLLING THE SURVIVORS INTO MURDERING EACH OTHER. THIS IS SO $%@#ING AWESOME.”

And I love Nova. I always have. It’s lovely to see her finally get a starring role in-game.

Overall rating: 8.9/10

It amazes me that more than five years after its initial release, StarCraft II is still innovating, providing experiences that are as good as anything in gaming, and generally making the rest of Blizzard look bad.

It does sadden me a bit that there are no current plans for any more mission packs, but I suppose all good things must come to an end. Over the past few years, we’ve gotten nearly a hundred missions of StarCraft II story, so even if this does turn out to be the last of it, you can’t say we haven’t gotten our money’s worth.

It’s been a hell of a ride.

One nice thing about starting on Knights of the Fallen Empire so late is that I didn’t have long to wait for Star Wars: The Old Republic’s next expansion, Knights of the Eternal Throne. I’ve also been subscribed long enough to qualify for early access, so while the expansion didn’t officially launch until yesterday, I’ve already finished.

Against the empress:

Knights of the Eternal Throne is so much a continuation of Fallen Empire’s story I’m not sure why they even bothered to label it a separate expansion.

The war against the Eternal Empire enters a dangerous new phase as Valkorion’s strongest and most depraved child usurps the Eternal Throne. The focus this time is on Vaylin, and I gotta say, she’s a much better antagonist than Arcann ever was.

Vaylin manages the incredible trick of being both hideously, irredeemably evil, and yet somehow still something of a tragic figure. Maybe she was never entirely stable, but her father robbed her of any chance she ever had to be a whole person. She’s a monster, and she has to be stopped, but yet I still spent a lot of the story feeling sorry for her.

Plus, Natasha Loring does an absolutely fantastic job voicing her. Probably one of the better vocal performances I’ve heard in a game.

It’s not entirely the Vaylin Show, though. There’s lots of other intrigues and plots going at the same time.

There’s a school of thought that says that Disney declaring most of Star Wars’ extended universe non-canon is a good thing, because it frees the EU properties to chart their own course more than ever before.

I’m wondering if KotET is an example of that, because more than ever SW:TOR is developing its own unique mythology that is very different from and honestly better than the world of the movies. At one point in this expansion I found myself caught in the civil war between two hyper-advanced AIs in a post-apocalyptic Dyson Sphere. There’s nothing like that in the movies.

I also very much like that KotET spent some time revisiting familiar locations and plot threads from the base game. One flaw of Fallen Empire was that it felt so utterly disconnected from what came before, but Eternal Throne makes an admirable attempt at bridging that gap.

Also, this is probably the first time in the game the Sith Empire has been portrayed in a more positive light than the Republic, and as an Empire fan, I’m pretty happy with that.

They did a good job of making it all fit together, too. Despite pursuing several plot threads at once, KotET is a very tight, very focused experience, and for the most part it’s an epic thrill-ride from beginning to end. The only significant stumble was chapter eight, which was mostly just an endless slog through mob-filled wilderness in an attempt to pad out what would otherwise be a very brief chapter.

It is a very short storyline, but it’s well-paced, so it doesn’t feel rushed, and it only costs $15, so it’s hard to argue you aren’t getting your money’s worth.

Choices felt a lot more impactful this time, too. Reading up after finishing the story, it seems there’s quite a lot that could have turned out differently if I’d made different choices. Should be good for playing alts.

Alongside the Alliance:

Something that’s a bit more mixed is how Eternal Throne has treated the issue of companions.

No additional companions from the base game were brought back this time. I can see why they did that, because it did make for a smoother and more focused story, but at the same time there are still a couple of companions I’d really like back. I guess it’s kind of a no win scenario.

They did spend more time on the previously returned class companions than I thought they would, though. Well, Vette and Torian get a lot of screentime, anyway.

I’m also of two minds on how the ongoing romance with Lana Beniko was treated this time.

To be blunt, it’s barely there. There are no actual romance scenes; just some extra or different lines of dialogue that are few and far between. I have to ask myself if it was even worth the trouble of establishing the romance in the first place if it’s going to be so neglected.

On the other hand, minimal though it may be, I did think the romance content was really well done. I find Lana’s fretting whenever you’re in danger very endearing, and there’s one moment in particular that really stood out.

Without spoiling too much, there’s a scene where you’re heading into a place full of Force-related nastiness, and it’s bad enough that even Lana, normally icy calm, is starting to lose it. If you romance her, there’s an option to tell her, “I’ll be with you the whole time.” And it just felt so sweet, and so real. I think it might be one of my favourite moments from any Bioware romance to date.

I’m torn. I generally say I prefer quality over quantity, but Lana’s romance in KotET is a rather severe application of that principle.

My biggest complaint about Fallen Empire, having no choice in what companion you use when, also returns, though in this case it didn’t bother me as much. Partly because they did a better job of justifying it from a story perspective, and partly because you spend most of your time with Lana or Vette, which is more or less who I would have picked regardless.

Claiming your prize:

There’s something else that gives me mixed feelings. Normally I’d say it’s a big spoiler, but they’ve been telegraphing it so heavily it’s hard to call it a surprise at this point. If you’re determined to go in fresh, I suppose you should stop reading now, but honestly if you’ve been paying any kind of attention to SW:TOR lately, you had to know this was coming.

Knights of the Eternal Throne ends with the player claiming the titular seat, which pretty makes them the ruler of the universe.

Now, it’s hard to deny the cool factor of that, or how viscerally satisfying it is to receive such an epic reward for all that you’ve done.

But I do have to wonder where they go from here. How do you escalate from, “You are the all-powerful lord and master of the galaxy”? Can you top that? Will they be forced to just hit the reset button on the story (again)?

It’s a little bit of awkward fit for my character especially. She’s a spy, used to lurking in the shadows rather than leading in the open, and my entire backstory for her is based on her desire to be a servant of a greater cause. Now she’s a great cause unto herself, and I’m not sure how to adjust.

Marching into the future:

Something else that needs to be highlighted about Knights of the Eternal Throne is how much it’s improved the fundamental components of the game.

For one thing, the graphics continue to improve. Environments are looking ever better, and I noticed another sharp uptake in the quality of cutscenes. Many of them are quite spectacular, and almost as thrilling as what you’d see in the Star Wars movies.

Even outside of cutscenes, the game is becoming more cinematic. We’re starting to see things like terrain changes in real time — like a bridge exploding as you try to cross it.

Character models are also getting much better, though this can create a jarring disconnect. New characters like Empress Acina look almost real, while my own character still looks like she’s made out of Plasticine. It’s distracting, to say the least.

They did implement new facial animations for characters both old and new, though it’s a bit of a mixed blessing. It does add more personality, but it can get a bit uncanny valley in places. Lana’s shocked face doesn’t really communicate what it was probably intended to.

Bioware also put a lot more effort into game mechanics this time. SW:TOR now features vehicle mechanics, allowing players to pilot walkers against the forces of the Eternal Empire, among other things. They’re not the greatest vehicle sequences I’ve seen in an MMO, but it’s a good thing for the game to have going forward. Opens up all sorts of interesting possibilities.

One thing I did enjoy that was very different is one chapter that was devoted almost entirely to puzzle-solving, something the game hasn’t really seen before. They’re relatively simple puzzles, but it still turned out to be a pretty fun, clever chapter.

Finally, core class mechanics and combat seemed a little better, at least for the Imperial agent. Cutting out a few of the more irrelevant abilities and offering a talent to let me cast lethal shot while moving are small but welcome steps towards improving the otherwise dull core gameplay of The Old Republic.

At a fundamental level, as a game, Knights of the Eternal Throne is a significant improvement over what’s come before.

There has been a lot of controversy around the new Galactic Command progression system, but while it’s probably a downgrade from what we had before, it’s still better than what a lot of MMOs offer, and honestly I think the whole thing is a tempest in a teapot. I got several powerful upgrades and useful items out of it just by playing through the story normally.

And let’s be real here: Who’s playing SW:TOR for the gear grind endgame at this point? It’s like playing TSW for the PvP, or EVE for the story. Sure, you can, but…

I’d be more concerned with new the Dark vs Light system, honestly. It’s very poorly explained, and from what I’ve seen so far, the Light Side seems to win every single time.

* * *

Overall, while it’s not perfect, I’d consider Knights of the Eternal Throne an improvement over Fallen Empire, and a pretty good experience through and through.

I’ve been pretty harshly critical of the Harry Potter films over the years. Mostly they’re adequate at best, and just bad at worst. However, I maintained a minimal interest in the Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them spin-off. My logic was that with nothing to compare it to, there was less potential for disappointment.

Even so, I wasn’t expecting a lot. I went in anticipating a popcorn movie with some pretty special effects, and no more.

Boy was I off.

Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them turned out to be a far deeper, more mature, and more powerful story than I expected.

Fantastic Beasts begins with Newt Scamander, author of the book the film is named for, as he arrives in New York with an enchanted trunk full of magical creatures. This is a rather illegal thing to do, given the American wizarding government thinks rather poorly of fantastical creatures and general prefers to hunt them rather than preserve them.

And it doesn’t take long for him to run into trouble. When several of his creatures break free, Newt runs afoul of disgraced auror Tina Goldstein, who apprehends him for endangering the secrecy of magic. Along the way, he also becomes entangled with Tina’s sister, a boisterous mind-reader named Queenie, and Jacob Kowalski, a local muggle (or “no-maj” as the Americans like to call them) who has seen far too much.

Newt’s mishaps couldn’t have come at a worse time, either, as a string of magical calamities throughout New York have inflamed the already high tensions between the magical and mundane worlds. It doesn’t take long for the authorities to blame Newt and his animals, but he knows they can’t be to blame, and he and his newfound allies must work fast to recapture them and prove their innocence.

If I have a complaint about Fantastic Beasts, it’s that there’s this weird disconnect between the whacky and whimsical quest to wrangle Newt’s critters and the surprisingly intense geopolitical/magical concerns that end up forming the real meat of the story. It’s sort of two movies at once, and the one it advertised itself — the one about Newt and his animals — is a lot less interesting than the other one.

Similarly, Newt himself is kind of weak compared to Tina’s pure-hearted determination, Jacob’s humble lovability, and Queenie’s flirtatious charm.

There is something to be said for a hero who solves problems with knowledge, understanding, and compassion rather than brute force, and intellectually I appreciate what Newt represents, but the fact is he just doesn’t have the charisma or charm of the rest of the cast.

Come to think of it, this is kind of a hallmark of J.K. Rowling’s work. Harry himself was one of the least interesting characters in the Harry Potter books. Even in the Cormoran Strike novels, I like Robin and Shanker a lot more than I like Cormoran.

But I said Fantastic Beasts is like two movies at once, and it’s the other one, the one about the friction between magic and mundane in New York, that’s special.

What really impressed me about Fantastic Beasts is how incredibly heavy a lot of the themes it deals with are: segregation, conservation, religious extremism, child abuse, bigotry and what it does to people.

In retrospect, I maybe shouldn’t be surprised. I’m always telling people how smart and mature the Harry Potter books are. I just didn’t expect Fantastic Beasts to follow in that tradition.

Part of it is probably down to the fact I didn’t follow the movie’s production very closely. I was of the impression J.K. Rowling had simply tossed out some general ideas and then gone home to cash her cheque while the movie studio did the rest. I didn’t realize she’d written the entire screenplay herself. That explains a lot.

I want to be even more careful with spoilers than I usually am here because I think Fantastic Beasts is one of those stories that’s much better if you go in fresh and watch it evolve naturally. I will say that it’s a very powerful movie, and that what the threat actually turns out to be is both conceptually brilliant and genuinely terrifying.

I also think the villain of this series has the potential to be much more interesting than Voldemort was. Not so much due to anything inherent to the character as the way the series is showing the rough edges of where the magical and mundane worlds meet in Rowling’s universe. Voldemort just felt evil for evil’s sake, but this character reminds me more of X-Men’s Magneto — someone with legitimate anger over the world’s injustices who has taken that anger too far.

The ending of the film is a little underwhelming in some ways — it’s what we in my family liked to call a “Voyager Ending” in honour of Star Trek: Voyager’s ability to always resolve any crisis in the last five minutes, logic be damned. But it’s not enough to spoil an otherwise excellent experience.

Overall rating: 8.9/10 Vastly better than I expected.

Also, now I’ve dug out my copy of Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them to read more about the critters in the movie.

Blizzard has what I’m going to call an inconsistent history with its portrayal of women in its games. There’s been a lot of criticism thrown at them over the years, and a lot of is quite justified (some cases I may disagree with), but they’ve also created some pretty interesting female characters over the years.

Today I want to look at how the StarCraft franchise in particular has portrayed its female inhabitants over the years, because I think that’s been a pretty fascinating evolution.

Before I go any further, I will offer the caveat that I am a dude and that my opinions on issues relating to women should be taken with a grain of salt. I try to be sensitive and understanding, but obviously I lack the level of perspective and investment a woman would have for issues such as the portrayal of female characters in the media. What follows is my viewpoint; you are welcome to disagree.

In the beginning:

The first StarCraft game had a grand total of one female character. Now, to be fair, she was a pretty huge part of the story, but I’m not going to pretend it wasn’t a heavily male-dominated game.

Similarly, there was only one female unit in the game (well, two if you count Zerg queens): the Terran dropship.

However, even as early as the Brood War expansion, things were starting to change, if only slightly.

The number of major female characters in the story doubled with the introduction of Raszagal, who was also the first female Protoss we encountered.

This is somewhat significant because video games have a bad habit of only ever showing us one sex of non-human races (the neglected sex almost always being female). After twenty years, we still haven’t seen a female Ogre in Warcraft, and even Mass Effect took until the third game to show us a female Turian, and then only in DLC.

Raszagal was ultimately something of a weak character, but Brood War as a whole was devoted almost entirely to building up Kerrigan as a character — albeit in a very poorly written way that did more to make the other characters look stupid than to make her seem impressive. But, still, she was the star of the game, however mishandled the story may have actually been.

Brood War also began introducing more female combat units, though it was only two — both Terran, and one just a cheesy collection of “sexy nurse” cliches. Valkyries were pretty badass, at least.

Brood War gave a lot more attention to women than the base game had, but StarCraft as a whole remained a game mostly defined by its male characters. It would take until much later for more significant changes to take place.

Between games:

Some mention needs to be made of Nova and her rather strange saga.

Nova was to have starred in her own game, a shooter called StarCraft: Ghost, but it was cancelled before its release. However, she was not forgotten, by fans or by Blizzard.

Nova’s first appearance to be released to the public was the novel that bears her name by Keith R.A. Decandido. This established her as not only one of my favourite characters from the StarCraft universe, but also one of my all-time favourite characters in all of fiction, a complicated yet lovable and just downright cool person.

Nova would go on to star in quite a lot of tie-in fiction and become an icon for the franchise, though it would be a while before she took a major role in-game (more on that later). I’ve also previously pointed to her as a good example of sex appeal done right.

Also on the subject of tie-in fiction, I’d like to take note of R.M. Dahl of Christie Golden’s Dark Templar trilogy. Although she did not have any real appearances outside of the trilogy (bar her terribly ill-conceived cameo as a damsel in distress in Project Blackstone), R.M. is like Nova in that she became one of my most beloved characters. I always respect an author who can make me love a character I initially hated, and that’s R.M. in a nutshell. She’s a very complex person with a lot of layers.

Note to self: Reread those books sometime soon.

Hell, it’s about time:

StarCraft II is where I start to see big changes taking place, though I’ll definitely grant it’s not a perfect track record.

Wings of Liberty was still mostly the guys’ story, I admit. And there’s the utterly cringe-worthy Ariel Hanson to consider. It was Nova’s first appearance in-game, but she didn’t exactly do much.

They did start including more female units, though. Still a minority, but more than the original game launched with. For some reason the banshee pilot seems to strike a cord with people especially.

Heart of the Swarm was a mixed bag. On the one hand, Kerrigan took center stage again, and there were some prominent female characters among the supporting cast — though I’m not sure Izha should count anymore the Terran adjutant does.

On the other, the ending of the game could be considered kind of problematic, with some of Kerrigan’s thunder stolen at the finish line. I have a strong recollection of the profane rant I got from one of my feminist friends after she finished the game.

I don’t think it’s quite as bad as she did, but I can sympathize with the perspective, and I have my own problems with HotS’ ending, so I’m not going to waste much energy defending it.

Heart of the Swarm did add another female unit to players’ armies, though, in the form of the Protoss oracle — which is good because Protoss females have traditionally been very underrepresented in-game.

And that brings us to Legacy of the Void, which saw an explosion in the number and prominence of Protoss women in the story. Selendis unfortunately did not get the big role I’d hoped to see for her since her small appearance in Wings of Liberty, but we were introduced to Vorazun, Talis, Rohana, and Ji’nara.

I really like how Protoss women are portrayed. So far as I can recall, at no point in the entire StarCraft franchise have Protoss females been treated in any way differently from their male counterparts. It would appear the Protoss have achieved — or always had — perfect gender equality.

They’re not treated differently by the writers, either. Protoss women are, without exception, every bit as proud and formidable as the men.

I’m also quite fond of their art design. There’s a definite feminine quality to their appearance, and you can readily tell the difference between Protoss males and females at a glance, but they haven’t been sexed up or otherwise made to appeal to human ideals of beauty. They still look decidedly alien.

This stands in stark contrast to the ludicrous sexual dimorphism that you tend to find in the Warcraft universe — especially with the Draenei, whose males and females do not appear to even be from the same species.

I suppose you could make an issue of the fact that all these Protoss women are still largely playing second fiddle to the male characters — Selendis and Vorazun sort of share the role of Artanis’ sidekick, and Ji’nara is obviously second to Alarak — but they are all powerful and interesting characters in their own right.

Vorazun may be second to Artanis in the overall Hierarchy, but she is the sovereign ruler of her own people, and Artanis has been shown to trust her to lead the Daelaam in his absence. And frankly she’s a far more interesting character than Artanis ever was.

Meanwhile, Selendis is the commander of the Golden Armada, Ji’nara is a heartbeat away from ruling the Tal’darim, and Rohana is the only character shown to be strong enough to resist Amon’s direct influence.

There’s also a fairly credible fan theory that Selendis was the player character in Brood War’s Protoss campaign, similar to how Artanis was the player character in the base game. This isn’t confirmed, though.

We shouldn’t forget the ending of Legacy of the Void, either, which I think served as redemption for the mistakes of Heart of the Swarm.

Outside the main story, LotV introduced more female units — the liberator for Terran and the adept for Protoss — and the co-op mode, which prominently features several women as playable characters or mission contacts.

Finally, there’s the Covert Ops DLC. That was, in fact, the main inspiration for this post, as it undoubtedly gave more attention to women than ever before in StarCraft – or arguably any Blizzard game.

Obviously Nova was the hero, and she did nothing but kick ass and take names the whole time, but the villain was also a woman. Not exactly unexplored territory for StarCraft, but it was interesting to see a story that was entirely about the conflict between two women. That’s not something Blizzard’s done a lot of.

It also struck me how many women there were in more minor and incidental roles throughout Covert Ops. The Defenders of Man pilot on Tyrador, Horner’s lieutenant on Borea, Kate Lockwell on the news, and so forth.

It’s certainly a milestone for a franchise that began its life with one solitary female character.

* * *

There are two main points I’m trying to make here.

1: I really like StarCraft.

2: Blizzard has made a lot of mistakes in how it handles its female characters, and that deserves to be criticized, but I think they are making a genuine effort to do better, and I think that, too, deserves recognition.

I continue my march toward legendary status in Star Wars: The Old Republic. I’ve now completed the smuggler story.

The heist:

On paper, the smuggler was the class that least appealed to me, and in a sense, I was right. It is pretty much a collection of all the sorts of tropes I normally don’t like — over the top lovable rogues, selfish criminals as protagonists, and so forth.

It’s just that the story is told with so much wit and charm that it won me over anyway.

Of all the class stories I’ve played to date — which is nearly all of them now — the smuggler puts by far the most emphasis on humour. Others have had occasional moments of levity — the warrior story especially — but the smuggler story is pure comedy. Which is probably a good thing, because otherwise the story of a selfish idiot somehow stumbling into conquering the galactic underworld and saving the Republic would be a pretty hard to swallow.

I do credit a lot of the story’s success to the voice actress who plays the female smuggler. The entire story is pretty much just her putting on a master class in snark and smugness, and it’s just delightful.

I was also once again amused by the maturity of the content in the smuggler story — even if some of it is a pretty immature sort of maturity. At one point I somehow wound up debating the villain about the size of my companion’s Johnson. I may not have been romancing him, but I wasn’t about to let the good name of Corso’s dingus get dragged through the mud.

Also I killed a Hutt by throwing a grenade down his throat. So there’s that.

This was also the first class I’ve played mainly dark side (though I still made more than a few light choices). Just seemed to make sense to bit a more ruthless and selfish than usual on this class.

Smuggler is another class story whose best chapter is definitely the first. The good news, though, is that its quality doesn’t fall off a cliff the way it did for the inquisitor.

Chapter two and the first bit of chapter three are a bit dull, but it’s all part of setting up something pretty interesting (best I can do without major spoilers), so it works out in the end.

Part of the problem is they start trying to tie the smuggler’s journey into galactic politics and the like. It sort of makes sense for them to do that in an MMO, but it’s an awkward fit for a class whose whole identity is based around being a petty criminal.

I’m definitely glad I was able to skip everything but the class missions. I can’t imagine how you could logically justify doing all the other content as a smuggler.

Must be even worse in the expansions. Parts of the Eternal Empire story felt a bit awkward as an agent, but as a smuggler, it all must be patently ridiculous.

The crew:

Smuggler has very good luck when it comes to companions, compared to most classes. While none of them are quite as amazing as, say, Vette or Nadia, they’re mostly likable, and smuggler is the only class I’ve played who don’t have any companions I strongly dislike.

Corso was probably my favourite. Yeah, his over the top folksiness can be a bit much sometimes, but mostly he’s so decent and good-natured it’s pretty hard for him to not get under your skin a bit. He reminds me of nothing so much as a big, dumb puppy following you around.

I decided not to romance him on the grounds he didn’t seem like a natural match for my smuggler, but they still had a pretty warm, compelling relationship. Interestingly, it seems like Corso will develop feelings for a female smuggler regardless of whether you choose to flirt with him. He never said so in so many words, but he got really jealous whenever I flirted with other guys, and his feelings for the player character seem pretty deep.

He also has a lot of hilarious interjections when you bring him along on missions — nearly as many as Vette.

Smuggler: “Why do people always assume the worst about me?”

Corso: “I’ve been wonderin’ that mahself. I think it’s got somethin’ to do with the hair.”

The others are mostly a good lot, too, though. Risha’s not the most warm or lovable person, but I liked her “girlfriend” dynamic with my smuggler. I can just see them planning their next robbery while they do their nails or something. Bit of a shame her story never really gets a proper resolution, though.

One other interesting thing about Risha is the fact she’s probably the most clear example yet of crossover between different class stories. If you’ve only played the smuggler story, Risha’s history will be a big question mark at first, but if you’ve played the warrior story, you already know quite a lot about her and her big reveal.

Gus is kind of amusing, and I like the “failed Jedi” angle. It’s an interesting take on the Star Wars lore — obviously not every Force wielder is going to be good at it, but you never think about the washouts. They could have done more with him, though. He suffers from the lateness of his introduction to the story.

Bowdaar can be a bit irritating just because Wookie screeching gets hard on the ears after a while, but if you can get past the noise, he’s a fairly compelling character otherwise.

Akaavi is the only weak link in the chain. She’s as dull and one-dimensional as every other Mandalorian I’ve met in this game to date. Would still take her over Kaliyo, Jorgan, or Zenith, though, that’s for sure.

The next job:

I still have two more class stories to do: knight and bounty hunter. I’m also tempted to play more of the expansion content on my alts — I miss playing my warrior.

I think that stuff can wait though. I’ve been playing a lot of SW:TOR for a while now, and I’m starting to feel a bit burnt out. Boy am I ever sick of Hoth, let me tell you.

So I think it may be time for me to take a break. Maybe not a long break — maybe just a few weeks. We’ll see. But I want to play something else for a bit.

I tried really hard to give this book the benefit of the doubt.

Oh, there were warning signs early on. Little things that were wrong, that showed an author who hadn’t done their research. Since when does Valerian Mengsk of all fekking people use casual slang?

Still, I didn’t want to judge too harshly out of the gate. This was Timothy Zahn’s first book in the StarCraft universe, and besides, a few hiccups here and there aren’t the end of the world. Knaak’s writing can be a little rough, too, but I usually end up enjoying his stuff all the same.

I did a double-take when I realized that most of the new characters had received little to no physical description, forcing me to conjure my own images of them out of whole cloth. (I decided Tanya has red hair because she’s a ghost and, y’know, Kerrigan and all.) That should have been a pretty big red flag right there.

But StarCraft has had a really good run over the past year or two. Everything that’s been released in-game has been excellent, pretty much without exception, and it’s felt like the franchise has entered a golden age, like it can do no wrong.

So I pressed on. And I kept pressing on, until the end of the book, at which point I had no choice but to admit the truth: Evolution is a sloppy, dull book written by someone who appears to have little to no understanding of the StarCraft universe or its characters.

Evolution presents a rather bizarre scenario. It involves an attempt at a peace conference between the Swarm, the Dominion, and the Daelaam Protoss. What’s even more shocking is that the conference was orchestrated by the Zerg, by Zagara herself.

Zagara claims she wants to usher in a new era of peace in the Koprulu Sector, and to prove her intentions she’s used the Zerg mastery of bio-engineering to bring life to a formerly dead world. She promises do the same on Terran and Protoss worlds, to heal the scars wrought by the End War.

To test the truth of her claims, Emperor Valerian sends a survey team to the surface, including a surprisingly chill reaper, an underachieving pyrokinetic ghost, a scientist, a mysterious Protoss exile, and Generic Meathead Marine Dude #24601. It soon becomes clear to the survey team that sinister forces are at work on the newly green world, and tensions run high on all sides as a new war seems increasingly likely.

It’s a pretty weird premise, and a bit hard to swallow at first, but ultimately it’s the execution far more so than the concept that drags Evolution down.

And to be fair, it’s not entirely bad. Some of the new creatures and concepts introduced are pretty cool from a strictly sci-fi perspective, and if these plot threads are ever revisited (hopefully by a different author), they could go interesting places.

Some of the new characters aren’t bad, either. They’re no R.M. Dahl or Mike Liberty, but they’re not without their charm. Tanya, the ghost, is kind of cool, and I love the nickname the other ghosts gave her: Pyrokeet.

The pre-existing characters, though, are a mess. I’ve already said that Valerian’s speech pattern was all wrong, and Horner displayed basically zero personality through the whole thing.

Abathur, though, is the real travesty here. The author does not understand Abathur at all. He acts so wildly, absurdly out of character in this book that it’s just intolerable. I clearly remember dialogue in Heart of the Swarm that directly and completely contradicts all of Abathur’s behaviour in this book.

Artanis feels right, but really, how hard is it to write for Artanis? The man isn’t exactly complicated.

And there’s no shortage of things that are far-fetched, or just straight up don’t make sense. Like how an interstellar transport takes about eight hours just to cross one planet for some fekking reason.

The only real silver lining here is that Evolution doesn’t seem that relevant to the ongoing story. Normally this would be a bad thing, but this book is such a mess I’m glad it’s not super likely to have a lasting impact of the course of the StarCraft universe.

I wouldn’t mind seeing more stories about the adostra, but please, Blizzard, get Christie Golden to write them.

In the end, Evolution is a wreck, but it’s a pretty self-contained wreck. It’s not enough to spoil StarCraft’s current golden age.

Some of the StarCraft novels have been truly excellent, and are among the best sci-fi books I’ve ever read. This isn’t one of them.

At least it was better than Speed of Darkness.

Overall rating: 4.1/10

Before I start on my holiday blogging break (cause nobody reads this thing over Christmas anyhow), I have a bit more rambling on StarCraft to do, plus a rant on digital holidays.

They prefer to be called the “living impaired”:

Last week saw the addition of another playable commander to StarCraft II’s co-op scene in the form of Admiral Alexei Stukov, otherwise known as the only good thing to come out of Brood War.

Stukov is an unusual Zerg commander who leads an army of infested Terrans, combining elements from both races.

I was a little on the fence about buying Stukov, but then I saw the previews for his “apocalisk” cooldown: a giant cyborg ultralisk with flamethrowers and rocket-launchers strapped to its back.

Yeah that’s worth $5.

Stukov is, in a word, weird. Along with Nova and Karax, he’s another commander who’s so unusual it’s like playing an entirely different game.

Many of Stukov’s core units are only temporary, lasting about a minute on average, but they’re free or cheap to make and can be produced in vast numbers. He does get a few permanent units, but they’re very expensive and not terribly strong all things considered. I’ve had some luck with mass diamondback, but that’s about it.

Like a lot of people, I thought he was very weak initially, but as I’ve grown accustomed to his playstyle, I don’t think he’s bad so much as strange and awkward. It’s like fighting with one hand tied behind your back, but the other hand has a chainsaw.

He does struggle in the early game, but once you’ve got your economy up and running and have upgraded your infested colonist compound a few times, the endless flood of zombies will eventually wear down virtually any obstacle through sheer attrition. Back them up with a small force of diamondbacks and infested bunkers and you’re good to go.

He’s definitely not going to be my favourite commander anytime soon, but there is a certain satisfaction to unleashing the zombie apocalypse on your enemy and overwhelming Amon with literally thousands of disposable units.

For all that he’s ostensibly meant to be a hybrid of Zerg and Terran mechanics, Stukov is probably the most fundamentally Zerg commander in the game. His units suck, but you simply choke your enemy to death with the sheer number of them. It doesn’t matter that his units are weak individually because you’re sending hundreds at a time.

My biggest complaint at this point would be that he has so few strategic options. Infested spam seems to pretty much always be the way to go. Mass diamondback can work, but it’s expensive, and it’s hard to recover if you suffer any significant losses. They’re also worthless versus heroic air units.

He’s also unusually lacking in polish for something Blizzard puts out. He has a lot of bugs, reused assets, and quality of life issues. Having to constantly spam the button to spawn infested marines gets really old, really fast. Why can’t we just spawn them in batches?

Nova guide and holiday article:

Also on the subject of co-op, I’ve now published a detailed guide to playing Nova in co-op over at MMO Bro. If you’ve been unsure how to best wield the power of this legendary operative, this will help you master her abilities.

Also at MMO Bro, I’ve written an article on why MMO holidays suck and how to fix them. I don’t know about you, but I’m almost always underwhelmed by the holiday events found in most games.

I have now returned from my short holiday blogging break. As always, the holidays brought with them a wealth of in-game events in various titles, so it was a time for me to go full game-hopper. Here’s a sampling of some of the more interesting things I did over the holidays.

Elder Scrolls Online: New Life Festival

I had already been thinking of getting back into ESO, and the newly implemented holiday event provided the perfect excuse.

Like the rest of ESO, the New Life Festival isn’t amazing but nonetheless has a certain charm. It definitely doesn’t give one much cause for complaint, managing to avoid most of the pitfalls outlined in my recent article on MMO holidays.

The event’s hub is a Nord woman named Breda in Eastmarch, who sends you on daily quests relating to the nine main playable races and their unique holiday practices. It’s not exactly thrilling, but it does add a nice texture to the world.

Naturally the Aldmeri quests are the best. The Bosmer quest wins for most fun, allowing you to toss mudballs* at basically anyone, be they players or NPCs, up to and including Queen Ayrenn herself. Now, I quite like Ayrenn, and my character is rather fond of her too, but when you have the chance to chuck a wad of mud at the high and mighty queen of the Altmer, you take it.

*(I guess when you live in a place that doesn’t get snow you make do.)

Meanwhile, the Altmer quest is a bit dull but very quick and farmable, and the Khajiit quest is a nice mix of fun and convenience. It involves stealing things because of course it does.

That said, the Breton quest is kind of cool, and the Nord one is also fun, if a little on the longer side compared to some of the other dailies. Really the only bad ones are the Dunmer quest (fun concept but way longer than it needs be) and the Argonian quest (ew fishing).

My only minor grievance would be that the event does involve a lot of travel. If you’ve already explored all the zones where quests take place (which is nearly all of them), you can use wayshrines to save a lot of time, but if not… I’m very glad of that spurt of exploration I had recently; saved me a lot of time during the event.

It does illustrate the potential inherent in One Tamriel, at least. It’s great to see an MMO utilizing all of its game world; makes it feel like a real place.

It’s also a fairly rewarding event, especially when you consider the double XP buff you can get from Breda’s keg (which I wish I had learned about earlier in the event). You can get pretty respectable amounts of gold and XP from the dailies, and they also drop holiday loot at a pretty generous rate. With the help of a little trading, I got nearly everything I wanted in the first two days.

On that note, one significant piece of loot is the Nordic Bather’s Towel costume. I have been considering it as a potential new go-to outfit for my Bosmer.

Normally I avoid revealing gear in games, but in the case of the Bosmer, it seems to make sense to invoke a more barbaric aesthetic. She’s a barely civilized cannibal from the deep jungle; it just doesn’t add up for her to be in full plate or something. And despite the name, the towel actually works pretty well as a sort of barbaric kilt look.

Then again, it is really revealing. I’d like a more savage style of armour, but I’d still like it to be armour, which the towel isn’t. At least it shows off her tattoos…

Bleh. The Argonian low level tops are exactly what I want, but I’m about to outlevel them. Why doesn’t this game have a bloody wardrobe? What kind of game doesn’t have a wardrobe in this day and age?

If nothing else, I guess she’s now equipped to defend herself from the Ravenous Bugblatter Beast of Traal.

Heroes of the Storm: Varian impressions

I’ve barely touched Heroes over the last few months, but Varian is a character I’ve loved for years, and I’ve wanted him in Heroes of the Storm for a very long time, so when he came up on a free rotation coinciding with a holiday XP boost, I knew I had to give him a shot.

The interesting thing about Varian is that you would think he’d be a very complicated character, being the game’s first multiclass hero, but he’s actually quite mechanically simple.

He’s still theoretically complex because he is basically three characters in one, but once you’ve decided which build you’re going for, his actual ability toolkit and moment to moment gameplay are very simple.

I actually think he’d be a good choice for newer players because the simplicity of his kit allows you to focus a lot more on the fundamentals of the game — positioning, team play, and the like. There’s a certain purity to his playstyle that’s very charming. No gimmicks, no tricks, just charge in and bring the pain.

I tended to prefer his Twin Blades of Fury self-healing build — I found it to be both very fun and very powerful. Reminded me of how Valla used to be, except melee.

His tank build seems decent, too, though the range on Taunt really needs to be longer. I almost never got to use it because I was never in range when it counted.

That said, though, I’m still feeling pretty burnt out on Heroes, so after getting Varian to level five, I’m now on another indefinite hiatus from the game.

The Secret World: Same old, same old

Didn’t spend a whole lot of time in TSW this year. The holiday event was pretty much the same as previous years, with only a few very minor new additions. I did a few Super Hels and bought my usual party bag, but that’s about it.

There is one interesting thing to come out of this year’s event, but that deserves a post of its own…

Titan Quest: Not quite…

While it’s not holiday-related, one other thing that’s worth mentioning here, if only because it wouldn’t fill a whole post on its own, is that I finally cleared out the last of my Steam backlog by giving Titan Quest a go.

Titan Quest is an older game that recently got a remastered edition. The new version launched at a generous discount, so I figured it was worth a try, especially since Titan Quest is a game I’ve been mildly curious about for a while. On paper, it’s a game right up my alley: an action RPG based on ancient mythology.

The game does have a lot going for it, and it left a pretty good first impression. The graphics in the remastered version are gorgeous, and I was really glad to see that they seemed to have done their research in regards to the mythologies the game is based on. They actually know it’s Herakles, not Hercules!

There’s also a “build your own class” system wherein you can combine any two skill trees out of a long list of possibilities that I think is at least theoretically interesting.

I enjoyed my first few hours in Titan Quest, but over time, the game’s old school obnoxiousness really started to wear me down. Boss mechanics weren’t really a thing in those days, so the average boss fight tended to involve nothing but holding down the left mouse button and hitting the healing potion button on cooldown.

For, like, three minutes straight.

What really dragged me down, though, was the agonizingly slow pace of character progression. Leveling is slow, and there just never seems to be enough skill points to do everything you want. Not only do you need to spend points to unlock abilities, but you also need to keep investing large amount of points to keep your abilities up to par, and you need to invest points separately into the skill tree itself to unlock later abilities. Points spent on abilities don’t count toward advancing the skill tree for some incomprehensible reason.

I didn’t feel like I was building the awesome character I wanted to. I just felt like I was constantly trying to play catch-up and never really getting anywhere. A feeling I remember being common in older RPGs.

So as it stands now I don’t think I’m going to continue with Titan Quest. It’s a shame, because there is quite a lot about the game I genuinely like.

If nothing else it was good to confirm that my memories of older RPGs are in fact accurate and that RPGs actually are much better nowadays.

And finally…

I have also had another article published at MMO Bro: a guide to taking great MMO screenshots.

Since starting blogging, taking screenshots has become something of a crippling obsession oh gods help me hobby for me, and I’ve had a lot of time to practice taking good shots. I now pass my wisdom on to you.

At least some of these tips should apply to single-player games, too, if you’re not an MMO fanatic.

The Secret World’s holiday event this year was a tad underwhelming. No new content beyond some tacky decorations in Agartha and a very dull snowball fight minigame.

Some of the new cosmetics were nice, though. The moose and reindeer mounts are cool, though sadly out of my reach, and the new frost sprint is really pretty. Plus some nice general use winter clothes… and Elf ears.

Elf ears.

An item that gives your character Elf ears in The Secret World.

Elf.

Ears.

In.

TSW.

Aaaahhhh myyyy gaaawwdsss.

So, um, I had kind of a brain meltdown and a brief existential crisis and stuff happened, and…

Well, long story short, I bought yet another character slot and created a character I could RP as an Elf from the start.

So yeah.

This is my fifth character, and once again this is a game with very little use for alts to begin with and no reason at all to have more than three characters.

The worst part? She’s another Dragon — my third Dragon. It seemed to make the most sense from a lore perspective, and I wanted her to have as many green outfits as possible.

I don’t know if I’ll even play her to any serious degree. I still haven’t even finished Kingsmouth on Kamala…

I am at least trying to make her fit within the TSW universe. “Everything is true,” after all, and there’s already lots of Norse mythological stuff in the game, so I’m basing her character on the Elves the ancient Norse believed in — gave her a Norse inspired name and so forth. My thinking is the Elves in TSW would be a bit like the Jinn — embittered ancients struggling to cope with the modern world.

I’m waffling on her build at the moment, as I am wont to do. I started with elemental/chaos, but now I’m thinking elemental/blood makes the most sense, given Elves were viewed as the bringers and curers of disease. Shame — one day I’ll have a character that actually uses chaos seriously, maybe.

She did turn out to look pretty cool, at least — really surprised how good she looks in the geisha top from the issue ten CE — and if nothing else she’s been good screenshot fodder.

And honestly? Just knowing I have an Elf in TSW makes me feel better. More at peace with the universe.

Because Elves, that’s why.

Tutorial changes:

This was also my first time creating a new character since the global rebalance whose proper name escapes me but is usually referred to by fans as the NGE or the EPEEN.

It’s not a huge difference, but it is noticeable. The main change is the section in your faction’s training area. It now includes more instructions as to the proper use of the builder/consumer system (tailored to the unique mechanics of each weapon type, which is a nice touch), and it makes sure you grab two weapons before leaving.

It’s still a long way from explaining all the complexity TSW offers — I especially think more attention should be put toward explaining the importance of using passives from multiple weapons — but it’s unquestionably an improvement.

One strange thing is that you no longer get a full set of white gear upon leaving the tutorial and now enter Kingsmouth with most of your gear slots empty, but that gear never made much difference anyway, and it was always replaced quickly, so I guess it’s not too big a deal.

Interestingly, not all the changes are mechanical. The cinematics for new characters have also received at least one change: The dark-clothed fellow who appears to speak for the Dreamers has had a makeover and now sports some gnarly face tattoos.

Exactly what this means is somewhat open to interpretation, as are most things in TSW, but if you read through the discussion I started about it on the official forums, it seems it may actually have some intriguing lore implications.